Thursday, February 01, 2007

Winds of War: Where’s the Blueprint Against Global Jihad?

“If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

That’s a popular quote of Lewis Carroll and is a handy thought to keep in mind with our struggle with Islamism. Jeffrey Imm at the Counter Terrorism blog said, “The American government has failed to collectively use [its] formidable brain-power 5+ years after the attack by Jihadists on the American homeland to develop a truly strategic plan to fight the global threat of Jihad and Islamist extremism.”

Over five years later and we still don’t know what road we are on.

What kind of war are we fighting? It’s not a cold one, nor a hot one in the traditional definition of the term. I define a hot war as one fighting directly – and on the ground – to defeat those who are promoting and advancing the enemy ideology. In the current case against Islamism, those are the Shia and Sunni states in the Middle East and Pakistan that support the Islamism ideology.The war against Islamism is about wiping out the Islamist ideology, not just Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. Fighting only terrorists means the war would have no end. Only by eliminating and defeating the governments, organizations and individuals who support the Islamist ideology can we be victorious.

Again, what kind of war are we fighting? Well, we’re not just one but two – a Warm War and a Cool War. The Warm War, or an asymmetrical war, is one where both parties do not combat each other within the same 'time-frame', e.g. in cases of guerilla groups that attack the opponent by surprise and at unexpected locations – 9-11 is an example. The jihadists want us to fight this Warm War and slowly bleed us of our troops, wealth and freedoms.

The Cool Waris one where an enemy works to undermine the will of the enemy with intimidation, infiltration and disinformation means. It’s the war being waged against our very culture and its most valued principles in an attempt to make our culture submit to the Islamist ideology.

The weapon of choice for the insurgents of the Warm War is the use of terrorism. The weapon of choice for the insurgents of the Cool War is the imposition of Shariah law.

We need to know the proper road to choose if we are to create a blueprint for action against the Islamist ideology. If we acknowledge the weapons they use we can create counter measures against them. Terrorism is an easy weapon (a weapon not a war) to identify and define. Our defenses against Islamism today comprise about 99% against this weapon.

The weapon of choice of the Cool War is a lot harder to defend against for the following reasons.

Political Correctness

Multiculturalism

Self-loathing of one’s culture – see Multiculturalism

Appeasement

Pacifism – see Appeasement

The Islamists have learned well from the experience of ethic groups in the Western world as John Andrews in World War III has stated.

To me, it was a perfect example of the success of Islamic strategy in the United States. They have purposely positioned themselves as a persecuted minority, wrapped in the cloak of religion and “Civil Rights”. The Islamics study us, game our system and are very successful.

The secularist Left believes that the current religious war doesn’t apply to them. The “convert or die” choice the Islamics would give them means nothing to them. They are so focused on their hatred of George Bush, they cannot see past domestic politics to recognize the threat that faces not only our Nation, but Western Civilization itself. The Islamic outrages around the world seem distant: even the attack of 9/11 seems forgotten.

The struggle could last a couple of generations. There’s no guarantee that Western Civilization will survive. I wonder if the Left is ready to start studying Arabic and attending Mosque. Maybe the feminists will like wearing burkas and being forbidden to leave their homes without the escort of a man? Maybe the academics will enjoy watching every University converted to an Islamic Institute, where the only discipline is studying the Koran and the Hadiths. Remember; since Mohammed is the last prophet, there is no reason to study anything else. The arts and sciences would no longer be necessary.

While the Jihadists and Islamists have no singular approach, the diverse factions of the enemy have a consistency in a long-term strategy towards imposing Sharia on an ever-expanding Islamist world or in establishing a caliphate. The ability of Jihadists and Islamists to focus on long-term, strategic planning is what the USA lacks in countering such challenges on a global basis, ranging from the more parochial objectives of Islamists in individual nations who seek to establish Islamist governments to the Al-Qaeda "20 year plan". Why has the United States government been so incapable of addressing this national blueprint and study group for addressing Jihadist and Islamist threat?

There are multiple problems here: Yet there has been no determination as to what the term "homeland security" even means in a larger sense other than a reaction to the 9/11 attacks, and certainly not as a component in a larger government blueprint regarding Jihad and global Islamism. Thus, there is no "homeland security" for the economy, culture, demographics, and dozens of other war components vital for winning the long term war.

I’ll repeat that because this is the gist of the problem - there is no "homeland security" for the economy, culture, demographics, and dozens of other war components vital for winning the long term war.

And the jihads the Islamists use for these components are:

Litigation Jihad

Education Jihad

Cultural Jihad

Demographic Jihad,

Economic jihad

Institutional Jihad

Media jihad

Financial jihad

Criminal jihad

Thuggery Jihad.

And with no blueprint for action against these loosely coordinated jihads against the non-Muslim world.

Thus, we have a "War on Terror", and neither the true enemy nor the true threat is clearly identified. Furthermore, the focus on both military objectives and "counterterrorism" lack context within a well-defined war strategy and blueprint regarding Jihad and global Islamism, which has uses many other tactics other than terrorism to meet its objectives.

The American government seems to believe any serious investigation into Jihad and Islamism will be counterproductive to winning the hearts and minds of Moderate Muslims in fighting terrorism. This argument makes sense if America is only fighting "terrorists" and "terrorist activity". But the facts are that Jihadist terrorist activity is funded, supported, and based on larger Islamist organizations - ranging from educational centers to charities to political groups.

And it is precisely this lack of strategic thinking and planning that Jihadists are truly counting on. As Bin Laden has repeatedly stated, he hopes that America will bankrupt itself pursuing individual avenues of military conflict against Jihadists.

And our attention had been misdirected and fooled into following OBL’s plan to the ‘T’.

Our blueprint must be created in recognizing this drive by the Islamist ideology to make the non-Muslim world submit to Shariah law. Thus, our strategy is to defeat creeping Shariah law wherever we find it in non-Muslim and even moderate Muslim societies like Indonesia and Malaysia. Sharaih law should be looked at as a form of fascism and outlawed by the civilized international community.

But because it is hard for almost all westerners to imagine that actually happening, they tend to fall back on the cultural norms we have developed amongst ourselves which require tolerance, forbearance, compromise and understanding. All of which work just fine when all of the parties involved subscribe to the same basic understandings. But when one party comes to the conflict with an unyielding, intolerant insistence on having it done their way, as so many Muslims do when they come to western countries, then our tried and true approach to conflict resolution -- tolerance, compromise, understanding, flexibility -- fails and we are left having yielded to demands which, were they to have been seen and understood in the context of a multi-faceted on-going, protracted cultural and religious war would never have been made.

Unhappily, all signs in Western Europe point to an increasingly speedy decline in their ability to articulate and defend their cultures against an aggressive Islamic insistence on the Islamisization of those countries. America and Australia seem so far to have had the most success in resisting this encroachment but even here there is an endless supply of efforts by Muslims to change our culture to first accommodate their beliefs and religion and, although they don't often articulate it clearly, eventually change us into an Islamic society. In order to defend ourselves, we will have to understand two things: what our culture is and why it is worth defending; and that there really is a religious war going on around the globe right now, the intention of which is to Islamicize the world.

The never ending discussion about what Islam is or is not is unproductive. We need to focus our energies on any attempt by Islamists to force Shariah law on our media, institutions, financial and legal systems and defeat there. Defeat the attempts of imposing Shariah law wherever we find it and we will go a long way in winning the Cool War.

Traditionally, America did not homogenize its diverse people. The notion of the “melting pot,” is inaccurate. Instead, America did one better. As it welcomed its diverse people, America united them around a set of core values such as respect for human rights, democratic governance, and the rule of law.

An excellent point! It’s these values that we must defend and these values that take priority over any other cultures. If you want to live in a civilized western culture, these are the values that you must hold true.

David Steinmannwrites:

It has taken the west a very long time to evolve into a society we are comfortable with. But if we have come to take it for granted, or have forgotten why we value its underlying principles, or have lost the ability to fight to defend it, then we will lose this war because the other side is religiously driven and is convinced that it is fighting for its god's principles...........Often it will be a subtle conflict with its battles fought in places such as schools or in courtrooms. And sometimes the battles will be fought with guns. But they will all be part of the same conflict and we fail to understand that at our extreme peril.

This isn't the kind of "war" we are used to understanding and knowing how to go about winning. Both on the battlefield and inside our own country the rules have changed and the enemy is using tactics we haven't faced before. We will have to adjust to these changes if we are to be successful. When you read the news try to see it through that kind of prism and you will understand it better and, hopefully, be better prepared to be less tolerant and more insistent that western values and culture not be eroded in order to accommodate Muslim insistence on their culture and values which are so often anathema to our beliefs and values.

It's going to be hard but we are all soldiers -- like it or not -- in this conflict. And it's past time to saddle up and get into the battle.

Hear Him? Good. Saddle Up!

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